Day 5 – Monday 18 December

An early start & breakfast before we catch the taxi out the front of the apartment complex to the Abu Dhabi airport, out in the desert & surrounded by sand.  We have a 2 hour 40minute flight to Amman, Jordan departing at 10.45am on an Etihad Boeing 787-900, a brand new plane.  We stop in the lounge & relax with a coffee & some food before making our way to the gate.  It is then a 10 minute bus trip across to the other side of the airport to catch the plane (I really felt my age when an elderly lady got up & insisted on me sitting down on her seat – maybe it was my grey hair).  The plane was parked on the tarmac & we walk up the long flight of mobile stairs, haven’t done that in a while.  Abu Dhabi Airport is big & they are in the process of making it much bigger. Our flight to Jordan is comfortable & uneventful, a few bumps as we pass through the cloud belts before catching sight of the land below, very barren & not too many buildings in sight.  The airport is in the middle of the desert & plenty of sand & rocks around but once again very surprised by the big Christmas tree & decoration that greet us in the airport.  We pick up a Kia Carnival car from Thrifty & we all fit in comfortably with luggage.  Charles drives us the 25km into Amman & the impression is that Jordan is not as well off as the UAE, the housing & infrastructure is old & the cars are old as well.  All the houses & buildings have the same sandy colour, or some raw concrete unfinished, deserted or just neglected.  As we get closer to the city the traffic gets heavier & the manner of erratic driving by the locals becomes apparent, I am certainly glad Charles is driving.  We start to see a very big polluted city from the distance.  In front of the hotel there are guards & spikes on the road.  We have to stop to make sure that we should be going in there & the luggage is looked at & then the gate is opened & the spikes on the road let down. We have to go through security & metal detector – we are assured that this country is very safe. Our hotel is the Amman Rotana, the tallest building in Amman & a very beautiful 5 star hotel, once again beautiful Christmas decorations everywhere.  Our luxurious room is on the 31st floor – fantastic day & night view of the city.

After settling in we catch a couple of taxis to the ancient citadel complex, about 15 minutes drive away in the old city area.  The traffic is very heavy & intense, it’s peak hour traffic at 3 pm as the working time is 8am – 3pm.  The locals have their very own way of driving, they make lanes where there are none & merge by just moving over, the driver must be so alert.  There is lots of horn honking.  Our taxi driver is an amazing font of knowledge & very friendly with great English, he lived for 26 years in the USA.  He mentioned that the villas in the new part of the city sell for more than US$2 million, we are amazed.  The Citadel is located on the site of ancient city of Rabbath-Ammon & has remains from the Greek, Roman, Byzantine & early Islamic periods.  Limestone caves on top of the Citadel show evidence of human habitation dating back many thousands of years before then.  It is truly an ancient site.  The most prominent ruin is the Temple of Hercules.  The ruins of the Umayyad Palace stand off to one corner of the Citadel hill.  There is also a cemetery with the remains of Ottoman Turks that occupied the country for hundreds of years.  At the very top of the hill is the remains of an ancient mosque, no doubt built on top of some preceding structure.  There is a lot of evidence of recycling building materials amongst all the ruins.  Near the top of the hill is a very large Roman water reservoir & some Roman baths.  Next to it is the ruins of a Byzantine church, with mosaic tiles evident on the floor in one of the rooms.  The Jordan Archaeological Museum is on the other side of the Citadel Hill & displays lots of artefacts from Jordan that date from prehistoric times to the 15^th Century.  Outside the museum are some remains of a statue of Hercules, some fingers & an elbow, based on that they estimate the statue was 15 metres high. The Citadel Hill overlooks the ancient Roman Theatre of 6,000 seats built into the hillside in the old town, it is still in use today & is a very impressive sight from above.  There is a great view of the old city & we are amazed at the sheer number of houses clinging to the sides of the hills in all directions & off into the distance before they fade into the haze of air pollution.  We don’t have time to go & see it up close as the sun is setting & the gates of Citadel Hill close.  Once again armed guards are seen at the gate.

Another taxi ride back to our hotel, the traffic is less frantic.  The taxi driver said that the city has three & a half million inhabitants – in the last 12 years the city & the country doubled in population because of all the influx of refugees.  The view from our 31^st floor room over Amman is splendid as the sun is setting.  We overlook the Boulevard, elaborately decorated with all manner of xmas lights, trees & decorations so we walk out & explore.  The Boulevard is crowded with all manner of Jordanians out enjoying the xmas decorations, it is a really splendid sight.  There are lots of people dressed in the traditional muslim garb enjoy the elaborate display, getting photos taken with Santa & the elves with a huge xmas tree as a backdrop, all the while with xmas music in the background.  Totally not what I had expected from a predominately muslim country.  We find a spot of dinner, the appetite of the kids seem insatiable.  The mall is very large & modern, beautiful interior & lots of glamorous shops. Our walk back to our motel is just as enjoyable, soaking the atmosphere in.  The long day has been compounded by losing another 2 hours in the time zone change, so we are now 9 hours behind Australian time, our body clock is totally out of whack. That didn’t stop us enjoying a great day.